A fateful encounter

After seeing one of the members of the show's cast appear so suddenly, I become momentarily stunned, to the point I almost gave away my location and got the three men attention on me. I then take a minute to calmly think and analyse the situation.

Neopolitan.

The silent partner in crime of Roman Torchwick, the short sized acrobat that will be responsible for giving many headaches for Law enforcement and a ally of Cinder following the death of her partner and mentor. Suffice it to say that if we met a few years into the future then she and I would without a doubt be enemies. But currently she is just an abandoned girl that is trying to survive on the streets.

That leaves another question to be answered:

'How did we end up meeting each other at this specific moment?'

The answer to that is very simple, my actions and routine are very different from the original's, so sooner or later I would end up meeting someone that I knew of, it was simply inevitable.

And that leaves me with the last question that is in my head:

'What should I do about this?'

His first option would be to turn back and pretend he didn't see anything, that would be the most 'canon' of the options with things going very close to how they did in the show. And that is a very dumb choice since I would be giving a very useful asset to my future enemy. In what world does handing her in a silver platter to Roman/Cinder is a good idea?

His next option would be to go in and make sure that she will never gets the chance of becoming a problem. Thinking of killing a young girl that is yet to commit any crimes is without a doubt very disgusting and inhumane of my part but it would solve many issues since it's unlikely that she will be very easily replaced by Roman. But such extreme measures I ones I would like to avoid unless I have no other option.

The last and quite frankly the only correct choice here would be to snatch her before Roman can get his hands on her, this would not only keep her away from his enemies but he would also gain an invaluable ally out of it.

Neo has many things going on her favor such as the fact that recruiting and gaining her trust wouldn't be too hard considering her circumstances, she could become a very skilled acrobat and a fearsome fighter with training and combined with aura techniques she could become even stronger, her semblance could give her access to places that I wouldn't be able to go and most important of all: She is someone loyal.

She proved this when she had the opportunity to abandon Roman after he started to be threatened by Cinder but chose to stick with him and after his death she could have return to a easy thief life but instead chose to avenge him, someone that is that loyal is certainly a worthy investment in my book.

Having made my decision I walk towards the three men whilst my mind considered all possibilities and came up with a plan to end this fight quickly.

They are auraless and probably have little to no actual combat training considering that they need to gang up just to deal with a little girl and also appear to be moderately intoxicated, for many other students in the dojo this would be enough for them to turn arrogant and go for a frontal assault but before going full retard there are a few considerations that need to be made.

Firstly, despite my great physical attributes(for a kid my age), they were still inferior to that of an adult, combined with only having a few months of training and being outnumbered this will prove to be a greater challenge then fighting with one of the senior students. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely confident in winning, I'm definitely not so weak that I can be defeated by civilians but I will definitely not leave unscathed if it turns into a brawl.

And considering that I will have to explain to my sister from where the bruises come from afterwards, resulting in her possibly prohibiting me from passing through the more dangerous streets and cutting my apprenticeship short. I will have to do this without getting myself wounded.

I quietly aproach the group while I prepare to attack as soon as an opportunity is presented to me, Master would certainly not approve the use of a sneak attack but this isn't a fair fight to begin with and I need all the advantages I can get.

"*Huff* *Huff*, we finally caught this little rat." Came the voice from the first man.

"Yeah, she is pretty fast for a malnourished street brat, can't believe that she made us chase her for so long." Came from the other man.

"She is going to regret her actions, she picked the wrong person to try to steal from." Said the last man that was already approaching the cornered girl.

"We're doing this city a favor, there is a lot of this little pests roaming around spreading disease and begging for food. It's about time someone does something about their numbers." Said the first man while spewing pathetic excuses for the atrocious act they are about to commit.

Growing sick of waiting, I decide to throw away the plan of waiting for them to be distracted and decide to intervene right now, although I don't consider myself a hero, letting a little girl be beaten so I could get the perfect opportunity to take this bastards out would leave a bad taste on my mouth.

Approaching one of the man that was farther on the back of the group from behind, I prepare my current strongest attack 'Dragon's claw', while focusing all the aura that I can on my arm so that the attack does maximum damage and hopefully takes one of the enemies out of the fight. The enemies are not yet completely distracted, that would allow for the fight to end quickly and easily but I have already come up with a plan that will hopefully make up for it.

And before the man that has aproached Neo could land the first hit on her, he was startled by a pained yelp accompanied by a loud thud, turning around he finds me standing nonchalantly while one of his buddies was on the floor clutching the side of his chest while groaning in pain, completely incapable of formulating any words.

Seeing the unusual scene, the man shows a very confused expression that quickly warps into an angry one as he shouts:

"Who the fuck are you? You should move along now brat, there's nothing for you here." The man doesn't seem to acknowledge me as the one responsible for bringing down his buddy due to my age and just starts looking around for the 'real culprit'.

Meanwhile the second man has a more tense disposition and says in a concerned tone.

"What has happened here? Oi Brat, tell me what happened to my friend and then you can scram!"

Neo meanwhile decides to just watch things play out, she briefly shows a bit of concern while looking at me but it's quickly suppressed by her survival instincts and she decides to wait for an opportunity for her to escape at my cost. And honestly I can't blame her, we are just strangers afterall.

I just subtly take a deep breath and prepare myself for what I'm about to do, it's far from being a flawless plan but it's my best hope to avoid a direct confrontation.

I bend down and take a empty bear bottle from the ground while completely ignoring the questions that were being sent my way by the remaining two bastards. Then I very abruptly smash the bottle into the alley's wall scattering glass around and turning the bottle into a sharp object. I did this already knowing that I would be safe from any glass shards that came my way thanks to my aura.

*CRACK*

"You fucktards must have come to get me! tell Vector that I'll pay him whenever the fuck I can, I'm tired of dealing with his thugs!!!" I shout making my best impression of someone that is high in some expired drugs, my plan to deal with these men? Act crazy! nobody is willing to mess with a rabid dog that could bite them at any moment.

"Huh? what the fuck are you-"

"Maybe I should gut you bastards and send your mangled corpses to him so he stops constantly pestering me for money!!!" While I'm doing my best act as a insane crackhead I am constantly waving the bottle in my hands to reinforce the point, now I can only hope that my bluff works and that they're intimidated by the display.

"You fucking brat! You better run along before I-"

"Come here! Let me show you what I did to those retards that tried to steal from my stash!!!" I shout while doing a few faint charges that make the two step back and slowly get away from my target while I slowly got away from the downed bastards and closer to her, the girl meanwhile was completely terrorized and probably hoping that I don't come any closer to her. I will take it as compliment to my acting skills.

Seeing that the two men's resolve was wavering and that they were not willing to risk their life fighting someone crazy, I prepare to shout out my last line in order to put the nail in the coffin and send them packing.

"Now take my message and fuck off from here!!! Next time I see any thugs coming for me I will stick this bottle into their guts repeatedly until his intestines come out and then I will take them and..." The rest was left unsaid as the two guys took their companion that was still squirming in pain and followed my suggestion by taking their leave without looking back.

The logic behind my plan is that: 'honorable people' will always fall prey to 'cunning people', so if I tried to heroically save the girl in order to make the best impression on her, they would take advantage of it and use dirty tricks and their numbers in order to cause me problems in a fight, but there is a type of people that the 'cunning people' are very much afraid of, and that would be the 'crazy bastards'. And that is because 'crazy people' are unpredictable and they have no obvious weakness that can be exploited, so when faced with this kind of people they prefer to just retreat. And that was what I was hoping for.

After making sure that they're not coming back and clearing my throat that was sore from all the sudden shouting, I look towards the girl and start analysing her from head to toe.

Aside from her very distinguishable heterochromatic pink and dark brown eyes that was staring at him with fear and weariness, there was very little else he could have identified her by. Her equally dual-colored hair was currently so dirty that it formed solid crusts making it hard to distinguish its original color, her face was pale from her fear and very dirty, there was many cuts and scrapes on it just like in the rest of her body. Her body that was covered by only some dirty rags, was completely malnourished and you could easily see all the bones that were beneath her skin along with a few bruises here and there. Her height was actually lower than his despite being older thanks to a combination of malnutrition, her naturally lower height and his more developed body than kids his age should have.

She looked like a cornered animal in front of a predator as she tried desperately to not look weak or show weakness in front of him and failed to prevent herself from trembling as his eyes were focused on her.

As she currently stood, she looked like Gollum from lord of the Rings, just with much more hair that looked like seaweed that was dragged through the mud, suffice it to say that she looked horrible with a stink to match it. But despite all of this, he wasn't dismotivated and tried to think of what to talk to her in order to not make her impression of him worse.

His bluff has allowed the situation to be resolved without any conflict but it also had the side effect of making her even more afraid of him, that has made the task of earning her trust even more difficult.

So he can only trust that despite his previous life's horrible conversation skills, all his practice with his sisters and his many conversations with strangers would carry him through.